Keeping the Faith, Keeping Together:
Common Challenges for Baptists and AnglicansDavid L. Wheeler
Introduction: A Hunger to Belong, a Hunger to Be Sure
We live in an age which is hungry for community and hungry for values. We witness the first hunger in the resurgence of ethnic pride and the renewed interest in specific cultural heritages both in North America and around the globe. We witness the second in the renewal and expansion of what the Methodist theologian Thomas Oden calls “classic Christian orthodoxy” in our generation.
At the same time, this generation is described as “postmodern” by many secular thinkers, meaning that allegedly fixed values of all sorts are construed as variable cultural constructions, and the autonomous self which is the arbiter and critic of those values for modernity is itself seen as a cultural construct, a fluid and perpetually unfinished “project”. In response, many Christians insist that they are the recipients and guardians of a tradition enshrining permanent values that transcend culture. Indeed this tradition has thrived in myriad cultures across two millennia and has retained its core convictions while transforming those cultures.
It is fascinating to me how many of the exemplars of the contemporary resurgence of “classic Christian orthodoxy” ignore traditional denominational affiliations and elude easy characterization as to their ecclesiological type. Certainly in the United States and Canada there are “Community Churches” on the thoroughfares of expanding suburbs that are theologically conservative, congregational in their polity, but decline to be identified as “Baptist”. But sometimes we need the perspective of distance and difference to really get some conceptual traction on a phenomenon.
This happened for me when I was an invited guest teacher at a seminary of the Colombian Baptists (founded in the 1950’s by traditional Southern Baptists, but now independent) in Cali in 1998. The city was full of homegrown congregations, affirming sola scriptura, and practicing congregational polity and believers baptism. But their worship style and their emphasis on visible, tangible gifts of the Spirit marked them as participants in the worldwide charismatic renewal movement that has both accompanied and challenged “classic Christian orthodoxy” in our generation.
The explosive growth of such congregations in Colombia – indeed, in all Latin America – and the penetration of their worship style and assumptions into “traditional” churches had been so notable that Colombian Baptists found themselves asking at a theological conference that fall “Why Should We Remain Baptists?” At the same time, Anglicans in Africa and Southeast Asia are also experiencing explosive growth, while holding fast to conservative biblical readings, the Thirty-Nine Articles and historic Anglican liturgy, albeit infused with the energy of their own cultures.
What do we stand for, finally, as Baptists and Anglicans? What differentiates us and what unites us as we confront the pincers of postmodern skepticism and evolving forms of Christianity which equally challenge our historic ways of following Christ?
Actually, the phenomena which I have been describing in Latin America, Africa and Asia are right here at hand in North America if we have eyes to see. We’re vaguely aware that large cities like Toronto and Los Angeles contain semiautonomous colonies of nationals from every continent. I am currently teaching an Intro to Theology class with students from China, Colombia, El Salvador, Germany, Korea, Mexico, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Vietnam, and the United States. Yet this phenomenon is not confined to large cities. Southeast Asians crowd the elementary school I and my all white classmates attended in Louisville, KY in the ‘50’s. Central Americans harvest field crops on the eastern shore of Maryland, Mexicans put together thermostats in North Carolina and Ethiopians drive cabs in Virginia.
In such times of flux and transition, more than ever, the Church of Jesus Christ needs to reappropriate and reapply the Gospel. But in addition, those of us who identify with historic Christian traditions need to define and justify those traditions for the new situation if they are to endure and remain relevant. People will indeed have core convictions, even if those convictions are postmodern ones such as “all values are cultural constructions”. So Christian believers need to present and embody their take on the world with consistency, integrity and winsomeness.
I. Common Challenges for Anglicans and Baptists
Anglicans and Baptists in the United States and Canada are presented with similar challenges. Both traditions – as much as many Baptists would be inclined to disagree – are part of the Protestant mainline, composed of those historic polities with European roots that were present in colonial America and have played a major role in American consciousness ever since. And Anglicans and Baptists have shared in the decline of the mainline over the last three decades or so, in absolute membership, in membership as a proportion of population and in dominance in the religious and cultural landscape. This generalization includes the six hundred pound gorilla of Baptist life in the United States, the Southern Baptist Convention, which has flatlined in key statistics in recent years in spite of the triumphal rhetoric of its leadership.
We in the mainline are all in the same boat. By faith we insist that our Christian experience and tradition mediate to us permanent truth and values fundamental to human well-being. We are confronted by the contrasting challenges of postmodern skepticism and new, vigorous expressions of Christian faith that lead us to question our identities. Our culture cries out for enduring, trustworthy values at the same time that we are preoccupied by the dilemma of our own decline.
This massive nexus of opportunities and challenges is far beyond the scope of this brief essay. But I can propose a more modest but still useful conversation about the common and contrasting challenges and the common and contrasting convictions that unite and distinguish us precisely as Anglicans and Baptists. We continue to be precious threads in the tapestry which is the Church universal. We embody enduring values. How might we encourage one another and sharpen one another in our common loyalty to the cause of Christ?
I-a: Seeing Ourselves: Stereotypes and their Limits
When we think of Anglicans and Baptists certain stereotypes spring to mind no matter how much theological sophisticates might wish to question or qualify them. Baptists are religious democrats while Anglicans have preserved the hierarchy inherited from the Roman Church, only without the Holy Father.
For Baptists the local congregation is the center of ecclesial life. Every Baptist congregation is an independent entity, calling its own ministers, raising and allocating its own budget and owning and managing its own property. Baptist ministers relate to the calling congregations as “free agents”. In contrast, Anglican ministers are appointed by presiding bishops and serve at the bishop’s discretion. Church properties belong to the diocese, and the congregations occupying and utilizing them are expressions within a geographical area – the parish – of the entire connection, which is, most fully and properly, “the church”.
Baptists are Bible-centered, constructing their worship around expository preaching and calls for conversion, while Anglicans conduct liturgical pageants centered around the celebration of the Eucharist. (For Baptists, the celebration of the Lord’s Supper is “only a symbol” – no speculation of any kind about the “real presence” of Christ therein.)
Anglicans are a creedal people, bound by allegiance to the great ecumenical creeds of the first six Christian centuries, while Baptists own no authority but the Bible, and defend the right, the competency -- and indeed, the duty – of every believer to interpret scripture and apply it to their own life.
You and I may resist and debate such stereotypes, but I can tell you that they come spontaneously and authoritatively from my first year theology students. Stereotypes arise and persist because there is an element of truth in them. But if we are going to understand, encourage and accompany one another in our common tasks and challenges, it will be helpful to examine how the American experience has blurred and qualified the stereotypes.
II. Blurred Stereotypes
Martin E. Marty wrote twenty years ago of what he called “the Baptistification of America”, in which Lutherans and Presbyterians recount “born again” experiences, parish councils and lay leaders direct Roman Catholic parishes with absentee priests, Episcopalians say “no” to their bishops’ pastoral candidates and the adult children of mainline parents “shop” for the best congregational fit regardless of tradition – the ultimate in “voluntary association”. And beyond the structures of traditional denominations, thousands of new independent congregations practice congregational polity and believers baptism and form new voluntary associations for ministry and mission beyond the local community.
Instead of thinking of Baptists and other typically conservative free church Christians as religious primitives, one could argue that their championing of the separation of church and state and freedom of conscience, their formation of gathered congregations through the voluntary association of individuals – each of whom uses their autonomous reason to analyze the claims of scripture, and each of whom relates directly to Jesus Christ as “personal Savior” – represents a peculiarly modern form of Christian faith, incubated in the womb of the Enlightenment.
In the soil of American culture, it seems that Baptists flourish and other traditions become more Baptistic. Perhaps many Anglicans would prefer to say that in the current ferment they have simply rediscovered and reaffirmed the Evangelical elements of their own tradition. At any rate, these conditions challenge us to reexamine our stereotypes of Baptists and Anglicans with care.
Established churches disappeared from the American scene relatively early; more and more, church affiliations were chosen. At the same time, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, some “Evangelicals” – most notably the ascendant conservative leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention – have begun to behave like representatives of an established church, seeking recognition from and connection with state and national government leadership, made up, increasingly, of their own. Church and state “separation” has come under pressure for redefinition through pressure for state aid to Christian schools and “charitable choice” initiatives. And these new Baptist leaders have tended more and more to read scripture through authoritarian and hierarchical lenses. Whatever validity the stereotypes I described above might once have held, they are now increasingly blurred and even turned upside among both Baptista and Anglicans. Let’s look at some examples.
The 2000 version of the Southern Baptist’s Convention’s official “confession”, The Baptist Faith and Message, elicited controversy for its detailed description of the correct biblical relationship between husbands and wives. But for many close readers, it was most interesting for a small change in Article I, “The Scriptures”. The 1963 Baptist Faith and Message concluded this article with the statement, “The criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ”. The 2000 version replaced this sentence with, “All Scripture is a testimony to Christ, who is himself the focus of divine revelation”.
The historic Biblicism of Baptists seems to have been raised to a new height, where the Bible has an independent authority even over against Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh. But the body of the article is clearly and traditionally Baptist:
The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is God’s revelation
of Himself to man… It reveals the principles by which God judges us, and
therefore is, and will remain to the end of the world, the true center of
Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct,
creeds and religious opinions should be tried.
Compare these words with those of Article 6, “The Authority of the Bible”, from the “Montreal Declaration of Anglican Essentials”:
The canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are “God’s word
written”, inspired and authoritative, true and trustworthy, coherent, sufficient
for salvation, living and powerful as God’s guidance for belief and believer…
The church may not judge the Scriptures, selecting and discarding from
among their teachings…
Conservative Baptists and evangelical Anglicans sound more like each other than they do like more “liberal” members of their own communions. Some would say it is ironic that in responding to the flux and uncertainty of a postmodern, secular culture, we are tempted to treat our sacred narratives as axiomatic systems characterized by their “coherence” and embedded principles, a classically modern strategy. Others would say that it is most natural to expect the Creator and the Creator’s self-revelation to display a consistent inherent rationality.
Conservative Anglicans may approach scripture with a the same degree of reverence and trust as Baptists, but their accountability to a tradition mitigates against their pretending to read it, as do some Baptists, through a transparency of twenty compressed centuries, as if there had been no history of interpretation, no development of doctrine and no cultural influence upon biblical interpretation. The “Landmark” school of church history notwithstanding, modern Anglicans and Baptists sink their roots in the same intellectual soil: the Wycliffe-Tyndale-King James scripture tradition, and the British, common-sense empiricism of Bacon, Locke and Hume.
In this philosophical tradition, data are discrete and relate externally in rationally describable patterns. Human beings make sense of their empirical data by means of their intellectual operations upon that data. On this model, the scriptures provide foundational data for our Christian world-view and self-formation.
At this point, the stereotype leaps up and says that the Baptist accepts no prayer book but the Bible itself and no creed but the explicit affirmations contained in scripture. In contrast, the Anglican affirms the ecumenical creeds of the first six Christian centuries and submits to the authority of the Thirty-Nine Articles. But let’s look closely.
III. Defining In and Defining Out
The split between social and theological progressives and social and theological conservatives that runs across the American mainline and the larger society has found vivid expression in the way religious communities attempt to define themselves and insure a measure of conformity. Thus the culmination of the twenty year resurgence of conservatives in the Southern Baptist Convention has been the wielding of the most recent version of The Baptist Faith and Message as a creed, drawing a line of inclusion and exclusion for employees of denominational institutions, missionaries and –indirectly – local church pastors themselves, through the supplying of doctrinally vetted candidates to local church pulpit committees by associational ministers.
A recent news article illustrates the practical affects of this use of The Baptist Faith and Message:
The Southern Baptist Convention has told its overseas missionaries they
have until May 5 to affirm the denomination’s revised statement of faith –
a document that opposes female pastors and says wives should submit to
their husbands -- or they could be fired.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . .
Despite their personal feelings about the doctrine, it is the obligation of
missionaries to support it, [International Mission Board spokesman Mark]
Kelly said. He said missionaries are allowed to note their disagreements
with the document “so long as they promised to work in harmony with it”.
When simple recourse to scripture can not guarantee uniformity of faith and practice, the Southern Baptists who speak of the Bible as the “supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds and religious opinions should be tried” (above, p. 5) resort to an official and binding interpretive standard; in short, a creed.
My own American Baptist family does not have the sort of centralized structure that the Southern Baptist Convention built up in the twentieth century: a network of six official denominational seminaries, and publishing and missionary agencies supported by the national “Cooperative Program”, which enjoy virtually unanimous support and patronage by the thousands of constituent churches. But the same spirit of mandated conformity has emerged among conservative American Baptists leadership at the level of the autonomous regions.
For example, the American Baptist Churches of the Pacific Southwest have published a “Confession of our Common Faith” with the following apologia:
Confessions in the Baptist tradition declare the church’s faith with conviction
and freedom. Baptists historically emphasize the right of individuals to
interpret the scriptures as led by the Holy Spirit, the priesthood of the believer
and freedom of religion. However, these do not mean there is an absence of
doctrines that we cherish and believe. In an age when many forces increasingly
threaten to erode orthodox Christian doctrines, it is incumbent on believers to
clarify the non-negotiables of faith… [I]t is our conviction that what we have
written here represents a consensus of doctrine which will aid in guarding
the deposit of truth which we believe is revealed in scripture.
In support of the present recourse to creedal authority, Southern Baptist apologist James A. Smith, Sr., executive editor of the Florida Baptist Witness recently reprinted an essay from the celebrated early twentieth century Southern Baptist theologian E.Y. Mullins, “Some Fallacies about Creeds”. Mullins claimed: “The publication of statements of faith has been a constant expression of our ideal of liberty”. He connected opposition to such confessions to “an incorrect expression of liberty” which is “due to an exaggerated individualism. Liberty is interpreted as an individualistic affair entirely. This is erroneous. Liberty is also a social principle. It involves relations to others, obligations and duties.”
IV. Forms of Governance
It seems to me that to the degree that a group takes the risk to read scripture “freely”, with a sense of conscientious sovereignty over against the constraints of creed and polity, the voluntary association of local congregations will be more prominent. The Anglican Province of America and the Reformed Episcopal Church, two of the conservative breakaway groups in American Anglicanism, say in their “Articles of Intercommunion”:
The two churches, recognizing the fact that they are working together in the
same great cause on the same great basis, pledge each other their mutual
cooperation, sympathy and support. (Article VI)
These two communions accept the Ecumenical Creeds, the Thirty-Nine Articles and the “Historic Episcopate”, in addition to “giving their adherence to the Old and New Testaments as the Revealed will of God”. Within their respective communions their governance is classically Episcopal. But the two communions have voluntarily separated from the mainstream of Anglicanism, reformed and then subsequently voluntarily associated out of shared values and convictions and a shared rejection of directions taken by the majority church.
In the wake of the tumultuous Lambeth Conference of 1998, aggrieved conservatives sounded like the conservatives protagonists of the Sothern Baptist culture wars of the 1980’s. Rector Judith Gentle-Hardy of the Church of the Holy Trinity in Marlborough, MA said:
Some bishops think unity and fellowship is more important than truth, as
opposed to the fact that our unity with the Lord and with his truth is what
creates unity and fellowship.
And Rector Jack Tatum of St Luke’s Church, Seattle claimed that if individual parishes owned their own properties, there would be “a massive exodus” from the church.
Baptists have consistently maintained that the local congregation is the fundamental expression of the church. New Testament professor Gregory Willis says:
The article on the church in the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message affirms
that God has revealed the doctrine of the church in Scripture. It teaches
that the church’s form of government, its officers, its ordinances, its mission
and its laws are those of the New Testament.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The New Testament teaches congregational church government. Such
verses as Matthew 18:17; 1 Corinthians 15:12-13; 2 Corinthians 2:6;
Acts 2:15-23, 6:2-6, 15:22; and Revelation 2:2, 14-16, 20 place the
authority for discipline, doctrine and government in the members
jointly.
To say the least this is a debatable claim. Hans Kung carefully lays out the several New Testament perspectives on forms of governance and layers of ecclesial authority in his masterful text, The Church. And Baptist theologian Millard Erickson recognizes the same plurality in his treatment of the church in his Christian Theology. But what interests me here is the contrast between principle (congregational polity) and practice (authoritarian enforcement) that emerges when a traditional consensus is being stretched to the breaking point by persistent differences. In the Anglican camp, we see a movement in the opposite direction. The unity created and maintained by Episcopal authority gives way to breakaways and the coalescing of new “voluntary associations” when subjected to stress. In either case, stereotypes are blurred.
V. The Church’s Responses to Homosexuality
We are all massively aware that the preeminent challenge today to the unity and harmony of the Body of Christ, mainline version, is the church’s response to the homosexual persons in our midst. Whether this question should be our major preoccupation in this broken and violent world is an open question, but what is is.
We also know that both the traditional camp and the progressive camp make reference to scripture to justify their positions. There is a very short list of texts – none of them directly attributed to Jesus – which bear directly on the question of homosexuality.
It is a commonplace of the debate that those rejecting these texts as prescriptive of contemporary sexual behavior claim that the behaviors cited in the texts were inherently exploitative and destructive, and often associated with the cultic practices of ancient Israel’s neighbors or the Greco-Roman cults which competed with early Christianity, and that this constituted their “sinfulness” in the eyes of the biblical authors. And furthermore, they routinely allege that the ancient writers knew nothing of “constitutional homosexuality” as recognized by contemporary psychology, and the possibility of faithful, covenantal relationships between same-gender partners, which fulfill the spirit of biblical teachings about fidelity and marriage.
Conservatives, just as predictably, appeal to the plain sense of the texts and accuse their liberal opponents of sophistry. Debate lines seem to be firmly drawn for the foreseeable future.
The leaders of the American Baptist Churches of the Pacific Southwest, whose creedal statement we referenced above (p.7), accesses and uses the relevant texts as follows:
Whereas, we affirm that all alternative sexual unions outside of heterosexual
marriage including homo/bisexual practices, adultery, and fornication are sin;
and such conduct calls for repentance and openness to the transforming power
of God (Lev. 18:22, 20:13; Rom. 1:18—32; I Cor. 6:9-10). Therefore,
Be it resolved that this Region take leadership in supporting, encouraging
and resourcing church based ministry to sexually broken people…
Be it resolved that this Region shall not recognize for ordination or
recognize the preexisting license or ordination of any practicing adulterer,
fornicator, gay/lesbian/bisexual persons…
Be it resolved that this Region shall not accept churches into fellowship
who have in ministerial positions practicing adulterers, fornicators, gay/
lesbian/bisexual persons or those who affirm, endorse, or celebrate
non-Biblical sexual practices as stipulated above…
As a prologue to these words, the authors of this statement quote a 1946 statement of the American Baptist Churches, USA: “…we affirm our faith in the New Testament [sic] as a divinely-inspired record and therefore a trustworthy, authoritative and all-sufficient standard of our faith and practice”.
The Anglican drafters of the Kuala Lumpur Statement of 1997 share an essentially identical perspective.
6. Scripture, the Family and Human Sexuality
a. We call on the Anglican Communion as a Church claiming to be
rooted in the Apostolic and Reformed Tradition to remain true to
Scripture as the final authority in all matters of faith and conduct;
b. Scripture upholds marriage as a sacred relationship between a
man and a woman instituted in creation
c. thus the only God-honoring, human-dignity upholding sexual
expression is within the sacred ordinance of marriage…
If the Scriptures (New Testament only?) are “trustworthy, authoritative and all sufficient”, that begs the question as to why the admittedly ample collection of biblical texts relating to sexual behavior and the very short list of texts relating specifically to homosexual behavior are made the crux of Christian fellowship instead of, for example, the voluminous directives in both the Old and New Testaments regarding the accumulation and disposition of material wealth. Is it fair to say that we invariably focus on the data that reflect favorably on our own behavior and defend our own interests, and downplay those that challenge our interests?
We might think of the use of pro-slavery texts such as Ephesians 6:4-8 by Southern churchmen in the nineteenth century controversy that divided the American mainline, at least structurally, for an entire century. Or we might think of the continuing use of texts ostensibly limiting the role of women in church leadership (1 Cor. 14:34-36, Titus 2:3-5) by both Baptist and Anglican conservatives.
And what principle justifies the valuing up of, e.g., the sexual prohibitions in Leviticus, chapters 18-20 and the valuing down of prohibitions in the same biblical material which carry equal importance in situ, such as the prohibition of mixed fabric garments (Lev. 19:19) or the prohibition of premature harvesting of fruit orchards (Lev. 19:23-25)?
It seems to me undeniable that we all bring extra-biblical values and perceptions to our marshalling of a de facto “Canon within the Canon” and our exegesis of the content of that Canon. This is equally true of classical Anglicans affirming a temporally-extended tradition and community of interpretation, liberal Protestants freely acknowledging the role of contemporary culture in shaping our hermeneutic, or conservative Protestants insisting on the uniquely authoritative role of scripture in forming faith and practice, and pretending to access its truth without the mediation of tradition and culture. It is simply disingenuous to pretend otherwise.
One could attempt to soften this conclusion by arguing that our sexuality is so central to human identity and dignity that sexual mores have a unique place in the constellation of divine mandates and prohibitions. I am reminded of Paul’s words:
Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I therefore
take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never!...
Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins
against the body itself. (1 Corinthians 6:15, 18)
Some conclusions:
1) We all bring values and assumptions to our encounter with scripture and tradition. Some of these values may be more closely and integrally linked with the authentic center of gravity of Christian faith than others, but the identity of that “some” is always a judgment call. The risk of faith is always required.
2) All of our polities have a degree of “give” in them. Baptists may speak of congregational polity and voluntary association. But they have historically generated confessional statements and ecclesial structures – seminaries, mission boards, publishing enterprises – that have functioned to define the limits of that association. Anglicans have acknowledged the episcopal authority and the weight of an ancient confessional tradition, but from time to time some have felt compelled by conscience to separate themselves from a church gone astray.
3) All of us have some non-negotiables. For many conservative Baptists and Anglicans, the ordination of women to pastoral/priestly ministry was already sufficient cause for separation. Now the debate over homosexuality has polarized those, including the American Baptists and the American Anglican majority, who found new ways to read scripture and tradition in the light of the cultural revolution of feminism, and preserved their unity over the decades that that debate fractured communions.
Today American Protestantism is pretty nearly divided among woman-ordaining and non-woman-ordaining communions, and those of us in the former camp believe ex post factum that we have more accurately divined the spirit and dynamic of the deposit of faith, or to put it another way, the work of the Holy Spirit in our generation. It can be persuasively argued that the church followed American culture on this issue rather than leading it. Will the increasingly “live and let live” tenor of American society about gender orientation gradually isolate and overcome what is still the majority position among practicing Christians: that homosexual practice, no matter what claim it might have to be “natural”, is outside of God’s will and part of the brokenness of a sinful world?
To simply accept this behavior because it is [may be] natural is a classic example of the “naturalistic fallacy”: x is, therefore x is good. But the readings of scripture and tradition by welcoming and affirming Christians are often masterfully argued, and have the added appeal of connecting with a central theme of Jesus’ life and ministry: welcoming the outcast.
In addition, for Anglicans in the United States, in spite of the “Baptistic” behavior I have cited, following their canonical leaders and trusting the consensus of the faithful remain defining themes of their life together. Words such as these of Bishop Jon Bruno of Los Angeles in the wake of the 2003 General Convention have a powerful resonance.
Consent to the election of Canon Robinson primarily concerns the authority
of the people of a diocese to faithfully discern and call a bishop to serve them.
In so doing, the General Convention respects the autonomy of all our dioceses…
These decisions have not been taken lightly. They have been made within
the established procedures of our Canons and with the legitimate authority we
have as an autonomous church within the Anglican communion.
I believe that the decisions we have made at General Convention will serve to
broaden our embrace of others and advance the Church’s mission to restore
all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.
These words will seem wise and judicious to many, reflecting trust in the consensus of the faithful and the sovereign working of the Holy Spirit in and through the Body of Christ in God’s good time. But to others they will seem only evidence of apostacy among the heirs of the Apostles, providing further motivation to cling fiercely to the biblical motif of the righteous remnant (cf, 1 Kings 19:48). This controversy is likely to be unresolved for a long time to come. The paramount question is this: How do we live together in the meantime, promoting the shalom of the Reign of God to the greatest extent possible, and not subjecting the cause of Christ to scorn and ridicule?
VI. Keeping Together While Keeping the Faith
I sat discussing this very matter recently with a conservative Disciples of Christ pastor. Disciples in their history and polity are first cousins of the Baptists, and have maintained – not without pain – a very inclusive fellowship in the midst of the very challenges and strains we have been discussing. I offered that the very name of his communion could serve as a basis for fellowship across differences. “We are all Disciples of Jesus Christ. This bottom line confession is the basis for the modern ecumenical movement. The National and World Councils of Churches come together on the basis of the confession ‘Jesus is Lord’. When ancient believers confessed ‘Kurios Xristos’, they acknowledged that the Creator of the universe was laying claim on them and that they were finding their Sovereign Lord present in human form in Jesus Christ”.
My conversation partner replied, “People mean very different things by that confession”. “Yes”, I replied. “On questions of sexual ethics some believe with all their hearts that homosexual behavior is a sign of sinful brokenness, and that following Jesus means to maintain a holy self-discipline, whatever your inclinations. Others believe with all their hearts that the radically inclusive love of God proclaimed by Jesus includes and invites all just as they are, and what is important is integrity and fidelity in their relationships, regardless of your orientation.
“These seem to be mutually exclusive positions. But what we share, if we are really striving to follow Jesus, is repentance and faith. We are convinced that we are nothing more, and nothing less, than sinners saved by grace, and that God’s truth both judges and embraces us all”.
Might this basic faith posture be a basis, if not for continuing organic unity, at least for continuing dialogue, respectful cooperation in endeavors that promote human well-being, and prayerful intercession for one another? We might well feel with all our hearts that our theological opponent is tragically, grievously wrong. And we might continue to press our case with all possible ardor. But perhaps in these challenging times the biblical injunction to “Judge not that ye be not judged” (Matthew 7:1) means to grant our “erring” brother or sister the presumption of good faith in their convictions.
So often we allege that our opponent is not simply wrong, but perversely, intentionally, willfully wrong, perverting truth to justify their own peculiar sin, be it sexual self-indulgence or judgmental self-righteousness. It is not simply that they are wrong; it is that they are wrong in bad faith. As one sinner being saved by grace, I need to accept in good faith the other sinner’s declaration that Jesus is their Lord, and look for points of contact between their faithful responses to the lordship of Jesus and mine.
Paul Barnett, New Testament scholar and Anglican Bishop of North Sydney, Australia, has said:
The apostolic writings call for a distinctively Christian interface with the wider
communities. “Conduct yourself wisely with outsiders, making the most of the
time”, writes Paul to the Colossians [4:5]…
If we are not to hold our Lord and his Body up to contempt, how much more should this “wise conduct” be directed to “insiders”, to those who by their own confession declare themselves to be Disciples of Christ?
Hans Kung reminds us that “The whole Church is the body of Christ”. In Ephesians and Colossians, Kung says, we are reminded that “the whole cosmos seems to have slipped out of man’s hands”. This is a dilemma that cannot be resolved by one local church, no matter how faithfully and how integrally that congregation addresses the world’s brokenness. Nor can it be resolved through the action of any one Christian communion, not to mention ideological groups that coalesce within or divide communions with whatever purity of motivation.
“The body of Christ”, continues Kung, “in these two letters is the world-wide Church – admittedly in a very idealized form…” Colossians 1:15-18 is a cosmic hymn, but the body of Christ in this hymn is not the cosmos, but the Church (Col. 1:18). Hence the reconciliation of the cosmos happens not through some occult ontological process, but through the proclaiming of Christ to all peoples and through service to the world.
For this noble task we need the energy and commitment of all who name Jesus as Lord. We can learn the implications of Christ’s Lordship from one another precisely through sharing our different perspectives upon his claims upon us. I have built Habitat for Humanity houses with fundamentalists, marched for peace and justice with Unitarians and examined the theory of theistic evolution in the light of Ephesians and Colossians with Salvation Army officers. Our witness in Christ’s name to a broken world gains power and persuasiveness “because we love one another” (1 John 3:4).
Finally, I contend that our Christian faith is not a posture of certainty vis-à-vis a particular body of doctrine. It is a risky complete surrender to the Wonderful One named Jesus, into whose full humanity we are drawn by faith (Phil. 3:12-16), and through whom divine presence and power indwell us (2 Cor. 5:17). May we walk with each other following Jesus. May we bless the world following Jesus. May we live together in this world out of our common loyalty to Jesus rather than separating and berating one another over our differences.
Let those of us who are mature be of the same mind; and if you think differently
about anything, this too God will reveal to you. (Philippians 3:15, my emphasis)
Thomas C.Oden, After Modernity … What? Agenda for Theology (Zondervan, 1990) 34ff.
Martin E. Marty, “Baptistification Takes Over”, Christianity Today, 1983, cited in James M. Dunn, “Celibacy is not the issue”. www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/5424. April 9, 2002.
David L. Wheeler, “Will the Real Baptists Please Stand Up?”, Baptist Freedom Winter 2000. www.rogerwilliamsfellowship.org .
The Baptist Faith and Message, 1963 version. www.sbc.net/bfm/bfmcomparison.asp .
The Baptist Faith and Message, 2000 version. www.sbc.net/bfm/bfmcomparison.asp .
Article I, The Baptist Faith and Message, Copyright 1999-2003, Southern Baptist Convention. www.sbc.net .
“The Montreal Declaration of Anglican Essentials: June, 1994”, in Timothy Bradshaw, ed., Grace and Truth in the Secular Age (William B. Eerdmans, 1998) 305.
Justin Bergman, “Baptist Missionaries Must Affirm Doctrine”, Monterey Herald, April 16, 2003. www.montereyherald.com .
“Confession of our Common Faith”, American Baptist Churches of the Pacific Southwest, Covina, CA, 2002. www.abcpsw.com/confess.html .
E.Y. Mullins, “Some Fallacies about Creeds”, Baptist Press News, Sept. 12, 2002. www.bpnews.net .
“Articles of Intercommunion Between the Anglican Province of America and The Reformed Episcopal Church”, June 12, 1998. http://anglicanprovince.org .
Ibid.
Art Moore, “Will the Episcopal Church survive the fight over homosexuality?”, Christianity Today 43-8, June 12, 1999, 45.
Ibid.
Gregory Wills, “Baptist Faith and Message: Article 6: ‘The Church’ ”, Baptist Press News, August 20, 2002. www.bpnews.net .
Hans Kung, The Church (Sheed and Ward, 1967) esp. 227-233.
Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology, Second Edition (Baker Books, 1998) esp. 1079-1094.
See, for instance, Walter Wink, ed., Homosexuality and Christian Faith (Fortress Press, 1999).
“American Baptist Churches of the Pacific Southwest Resolution on Human Sexuality and the Church”, Copyright American Baptist Churches of the Pacific Southwest, 2002. www.abcpsw.com/humansex.html .
Ibid.
“Kuala Lumpur Statement, 1997”, in “Trumpet II: The Encounter Statement”, in Bradshaw,ed., 299.
“After the [American] Revolution, American Anglicans established an autonomous branch of the Church, which became known as the Episcopal Church. Recently, within the last thirty-five or so years, that body abandoned most of the tradition of historic Anglican Faith and Practice. It is this tradition that many former Episcopalians and other faithful Anglicans are seeking to preserve and proclaim”. “What is the Traditional Anglican Church?” http://anglicanprovince.org/tradac.html. 8-23-2003.
In this context, appeal to the autonomy of the diocese is seen to function in the same way as appeal to the autonomy of the local congregation in Baptist life.
Bruno also refers to General Convention 2003 pronouncements on the “legitimate diversity of practice” in the Church regarding ministry to gay men and lesbians and the blessing of same sex unions.
“A Pastoral Letter from The Rt. Rev. J. Jon Bruno, Bishop of Los Angeles”. www.allsaints-pas.org .
8-23-2003.
Paul Barnett, “Christian Community and the Gospel”, in Bradshaw, ed., 134.
Kung, 230-231.